The HR department at Old Dominion Freight Line Inc. is going to have to rewrite its policies on return to work for drivers with admitted alcohol problems, following an adverse ruling by a U.S. district in Arkansas last week.

The court ruled that the trucking company’s no-exception policy violates the ADA, since it denies drivers a reasonable accommodation. The policy does not make an exception even for drivers who have completed substance abuse problems.

The court also said that the policy could not be justified under the ADA’s “direct threat” provision, the court stated, since that requires “an individualized assessment of the individual’s present ability to safely perform the essential functions of the job.

You can read more about the case, EEOC v. Old Dominion Freight Line Inc., on the EEOC’s newsroom page.

On to Florida, where the governor has signed a law that, beginning on Monday, will forbid cities and counties from passing laws requiring employers to provide employment benefit not otherwise required by state or federal law.

The law signed by Governor Rick Scott appears squarely aimed at stopping counties and cities from enacting paid sick leave laws competing with state sick leave laws. A group called Organize America worked to get an “Earned Sick Time” initiative on the ballot in Orange County.

Political subdivisions will still be allowed to pass minimum wage laws, and it also leaves employment benefits required by tribal governments alone.

The law creates an Employer-Sponsored Benefits Task Force responsible for “analyzing employment benefits and assessing the impact of uniform statewide regulation.”

Now resuming my 50-state tour of the latest developments in employment law. Today we’re in Iowa, where the state’s highest court affirmed once again last week that the Iowa Civil Rights Act does not permit awards of punitive damages.

In this case, three female employees of a merchandise company located in Indianola sued the company alleging sexual harassment, discrimination, and retaliation, and seeking punitive damages.

A state district court granted the company’s motion to strike the punitive damages claim, reasoning that the court could grant only the relief that the state civil rights commission could authorize, and punitive damages is not included in that relief.

Affirming that decision, the high court summed up its reasoning as follows:

It all comes down to statutory intent, the court said. It said it had “clearly and repeatedly stated our conclusion that the IRCA does not implicitly permit an award of punitive damages.” Furthermore, no significant legislative changes have been made since it first made that pronouncement in 1986 that would hint at any legislative changes.

Same-sex married couples must be afforded the same federal tax breaks and other benefits that are conferred on heterosexual married couples, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled today.

In striking down a section of the Defense of Marriage Act, the justices said that denying these benefits to same-sex couples violated equal protection of the laws.

The case was brought by a New York resident who was hit with a federal estate tax bill when her same-sex spouse died. The couple were married in Canada and the marriage was recognized in New York.

In a separate ruling related to gay marriage, the justices let standard a federal court’s ruling that California’s Proposition 8–which reinstated a ban on same-sex marrage–determining that the groups supporting the ban lacked legal standing to bring their court challenge.

As a result of this ruling, same-sex marriages will resume in California in a matter of a few weeks.

Many companies welcomed today’s rulings because they want to market to gay couples and also for competitive reasons of wanting to keep gay employees in the fold. Several prominent Fortune 500 companies–including Pfizer and Marriott–filed friends of the court brief siding with DOMA’s and Prop. 8’s opponents.

Probably the last person you’d want to deny equal pay to is the company HR director. The EEOC is bound to learn about that.

Royal Tire, a transportation company with commercial and retail locations throughout the Midwest, now finds itself a defendant in a Title VII and Equal Pay Act lawsuit filed by the commission last Friday.

According to the EEOC, the company paid its new HR director–a woman–less than her predecessor–a man, to the tune of $35,000.

The EEOC contends that this unequal pay violates Title VII and the Equal Pay Act because Christine Fellman-Wolf was performing the same work as her male predecessor under similar working conditions.

Employers generally emerged as the winners today in a pair of closely-divided rulings from the U.S. Supreme Court under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

One case involved the standard for holding employers liable for sexual harassment by a supervisor. The other concerned the proof requirements for holding employers liable for retaliation against an employee for exercising his or her Title VII rights.

In the first case–Vance v. Ball State University–the court’s conservative majority ruled that an employee is a “supervisor” under Title VII only if he or he was vested by the employer with the power to make tangible employment decisions such as hiring, firing, or promotion.

If a co-worker had some authority over the alleged victim-but not enough to make him or her the alleged victim’s supervisor–the employer can be held liable for harassment if it was negligent in permitting the harassment to occur, the court ruled.

The second ruling is a little more straightforward. The court held in that case that to prove retaliation under Title VII, the plaintiff must show that a retaliatory motive was the sole reason for the decision. In other words, “but for” the retaliation, the adverse employment decision would not have occurred.

It’s not easy for a store to track the behavior of all its customers, but an Oregon retail store now on the receiving end of a hostile environment lawsuit may wish it had intervened earlier.

A federal district court in Oregon ruled this week that EEOC may proceed with its case on behalf of current and and former female employees against Fred Meyer Stores Inc., which they claim allowed a regular customer to repeatedly harass them.

EEOC brought the suit back in 2011 after efforts to settle the matter failed.

No matter the outcome of the lawsuit, this case should prompt employers to take a careful look at their procedures for combatting customer harassment.

Here’s an EEOC fact sheet on the different kinds of prohibited harassment, including by third customers.